On Abortion – Bunmi Tella

I was asked where I stood on abortion in Africa….here’s my response…..

I’m definitely pro-choice and hate to see men legislating on matters which they know nothing about.

Just a couple of months ago the Sierra Leonean government tried to pass a bill legalizing first term terminations and it was vetoed by male religious leaders on the basis that it’s a sin. Meanwhile that country has the highest rate of maternal deaths in Africa and since the war a steady increase in incest and rape.

It is unfair that men get to decide such matters without much consideration for the mother – who is essentially then victimized twice.

The uncomfortable truth is that even if it’s not rape or incest, a woman should have the option to say ‘I’m not ready – I cannot handle this’.

A woman having unwanted babies is the fastest path to poverty and misery.

The other day I saw a video of 2 men “fishing” a baby out of a river. It had been abandoned by its mother.

When we force people, who are not ready to be mothers, into motherhood we sentence the child to a lifetime of neglect at best and outright abuse at worse.

Its unwanted children that become victims of sexual, physical, emotional and psychological abuse. Its unwanted children that become thieves, murderers and rapists.

During the first term, the fetus is barely a fetus and if i was a fetus I’d rather be terminated than condemned to a life of misery.

There is a reason China had its one child policy and African governments should be embracing terminations en masse to stop poverty if nothing else.

I don’t understand how you can care so much about some cells the size of a grape in a woman’s body but you can’t bring yourself to care about the abject poverty and the miserable life a huge chunk of your population is condemned to.

 

9jafeminista in October

9jafeminista has had a pretty busy Octorber, originally meant to be a bi-monthly publication, we have, so far, featured 9 stories, an average of two stories per week.

Ugo Chime

Our very first contributor was Ugo Chime, a public health practitioner who is passionate about being independent, her first story was ‘Forgiveness or Gini?’, during which she challenged the gender stereotype that women are the ‘softer sex’, she talked about how she learned forgiveness from her husband, who is supposed to be the ‘harder sex’.

The piece was followed by ‘An interview with Ugo Chime’ during which Ugo talked about her relationship with her dad, Maternal, Child and Neo-natal Health (MCNH) and the problem with Nigerian NGO’s and their funders.

Ikhide R. Ikheloa

It was not long after our interview with Ugo that the scandal involving one of Nigeria’s foremost bloggers, Linda Ikeji, broke. In which she was accused of plagiarism, and her blog was taken down for a while by Google. 9jafeminista noticed that out of the many voices baying for her blood, the men’s were more dominant, but a few people came to her defence, including the indefatigable trouble maker, Ikhide R Ikheloa, who pointed out that almost all the dailies online do the same and asked why the people who went after Linda Ikeji didn’t go after them, since they have been around for much longer. We then conducted an interview with Ikhide, ‘In Conversation with Ikhide: Lindagate Love and Feminism.’

Ayomikun

Following our Lindagate post was an interview conducted with a domestic abuse victim, Ayomikun. The interview was conducted in two parts, both are up on YouTube, the transcription of the interview was put up on the blog. Ayomikun took us through a harrowing tale of 12years spent in an abusive relationship. She talked about her many miscarriages, marital rape, and psychological abuse from a controlling man. Her story was titled ‘Yes to domestic violence: Why we should give up and give in (1)’ (and the video can be found here) and ‘Yes to domestic violence: Whe we should give up and give in (II)’ (the video of the full interview can be watched here).

Temie Giwa-Tubosun

Our next post was about Temie Giwa-Tubosun, one of BBC’s 100 Women of 2014, simply titled ‘Temie Giwa-Tubosun’ we put up her bio in order to provide our readers with a background to this amazing feminist. Following this was her non-fiction piece titled ‘Is this what a feminist looks like?’ She talked about becoming a feminist at the age of 10, maternal mortality and the right of a woman to do what she likes with her body, especially when it comes to their health.

In our usual fashion we had ‘An interview with Temie Giwa-Tubosun’, during which we talked about her One Percent blood donation project, reconciling feminism, God and lipstick, we briefly touched upon her adulation of Beyonce, and oturmapokpor – aka – love potion.

Briefly a member of falconets

Our last post was an editorial ‘Editorial: Who gives a damn about female footballers?’, which was an opening to the terrible conditions under which Nigerian female football players are made to play. We had an interview with Omolayo Adebiyi, whose career was brought to an abrupt end when she injured her knee. Her full interview can be watched here.

Phew!

Thank you all for visiting our blog regularly.

An Interview with Temie Giwa-Tubosun

From the Editor: Temie Giwa-Tubosun is one of the many young ladies in Nigeria working hard to change things in our health sector. Instead of just ranting about the poor state of our health sector from far away “in the abroad”, chomping down on her proverbial Big Mac and maxing out her credit card (like so many of us are wont to do) she came back home to put down roots and DO something about it.

During her interview we talked about the north, the perception of people about women from that part of Nigeria, maternal mortality and best of all she talks about the fact that the oturkaporkpor you’re planning to put in your lover’s food MIGHT-JUST-WORK!

Read on:

9jafeminista: In your article you talked about trying on different kinds of feminism before deciding to tailor one to suit you and in the same breath you talked about returning to Nigeria

Would you say that feminism brought you home?

Temie: I believe a struggle with identity brought me home the first time and a commitment to what I found, when I came the first time, made the final move possible and perhaps even easier.

I came home in 2009 deeply confused about a few things, the question of God and agnosticism, feminism and how lipsticks and high heels fit into all that, what I was going to do with my life and etc. When I got home (I lived and worked in the North for a few months) I found myself, at least a version that has lasted so far… Oh dear, that sounds so clichéd but it is true. I found a version of myself that I was comfortable with and that made me come home finally 3 years later.

And that included a feminism that I was comfortable with.

So I think I find that Nigerian women paid attention to how they look and there doesn’t seem to be any conflict with their femininity and feminism, especially in the North. The women I met in Kano and Jigawa, I know they aren’t the norm so I might be a bit biased, were all lovely but strong and ready to change their culture and I wanted something similar for myself.

I had a colleague whose hijab always matched her jalabaya and her nail polish but she spent her weekends counseling HIV positive sex workers in the slums of Kano. Giving them tools that will help them lead easier lives. I have lost touch with her she had a great deal of influence on my life. I remember that her spouse wanted to marry a second wife at the time and the great conflict she felt and her determination to find a better way remained with me and allowed me to create myself and perhaps consolidate my feminism and femininity into a real whole.

 

9jafeminista: Was the first three months you spent in the north your first time ever in Nigeria?

Temie: Oh no. I left Nigeria when I was much younger, it was my first time in the country as an adult.

Random picture of Temie reading on the road… who does that?

9jafeminista: I’d like us to talk about Northern women. The single story about then is that they are a bunch of oppressed women who do not work. They are usually uneducated and at married off early… What is your impression about them? Would you say these assumptions are untrue?

Temie: My impression is a lot more robust. I lived and worked with them for a few months and helped to deliver services to a lot of them in the rural areas.

They are like most people, complex. Some are brave and willing to spit in the face of tradition and culture. Some are quite fine with the patriarchy and just want to be left alone and some are the gatekeepers of the patriarchy. A lot of them I know struggle with polygamy, many of them are professionals, and many are independent.

I was lucky to meet women from different socioeconomic classes. I met professional women, seasoned executives and small business owners. I met high level civil servants and rural women who are living in horrid poverty.

For example, my dress designer had a huge shop in suburban Kano and had about 5 men who were her tailors, she employed them and made their lives possible. I also met a woman who had been in labor for a few days and who was so poor that she couldn’t get to the hospital and was going to die.

I think that’s the interesting thing about travel, it forces you to see people clearly and yanks away the comfort of the single story brings.

9jafeminista: We know you’re running a not-for-profit project can you tell us a little about it?

Temie: Access to clean, safe, blood is incredibly hard in Nigeria and this affects women significantly. Hemorrhage after delivery is the second highest cause of maternal mortality in Nigeria. Almost 25% of child mortality can be traced back to lack of clean safe blood. Blood transfusion still accounts for about 10% of all new HIV cases in Nigeria. It’s insane. One Percent Project works to provide clean, safe, and affordable blood for the people who need it the most.

9jafeminista: So what are the advocacy tools you use for your project?

Temie: We sponsor blood drives in higher institutions. We are in the middle of a 2 day blood drive in OAU and we have collected almost 2,000 pints of blood – that is 6,000 lives saved. We are in the process of completing our app that will connect donors to recipient in emergencies and many more tools in the pipeline.

9jafeminista: You’re doing amazing work! Well done Temie!

Temie: Thank you, 9jafeminista.

9jafeminista: As you well know we’re very irreverent at 9jafeminista. Can you tell me what you know about oturumapokpor aka love potion aka efo?

Temie: Laughter … Well I have never used it and to my knowledge it hasn’t been used on me.

Will it work? It probably could… I mean there are drugs that enhance and changes moods to a significant level and we all believe in their efficacy… right? So, why not oturumapokpor?

Oturumapokpor is probably a drug that enhances the dopamine level of the drugged… Methinks.

9jafeminista: Does that mean you believe in the existence of witches? Actually the question occurred to me when you said in your article that nobody seems to be able to explain why maternal mortality rates are so high in Nigeria… Witchcraft?

Temie: Well. Witches are probably people who learnt to pay attention to instinct and could thus predict certain events. Witch doctors were probably folks with extensive knowledge of the natural world (herbs / lotions / potions ) and over time can create concoctions that saved lives.

I think we really just aren’t paying attention to why we keep burying thousands of mothers.

Is this what a Feminist looks like?

I have been a feminist since I was 10 years old.

I have loved my older brother since I can remember and he was a magnificent boy and an even greater brother. He was strong, smart, and swift. I followed him around and was sure I was going to be just like him.

It was cute, until I was 10 and the world told me I could not be like my brother in subtle but important ways. You talk too much, why do you think you will be president of the world… they will ask.

I was outraged and decided they were wrong and that I was and could be all that my brother was and would be. That was the beginning of my feminism and I imagine that there are millions of little girls who come to feminism much the same way. A male figure whom they loved and wanted to be like and the world who insisted they were less because of their vaginas and ability to bear children.

I believe this sense of injustice is natural during the innocence of childhood but on the road to womanhood, many of us are taught out of it. We learn to exchange this sense of injustice for an acceptance of patriarchy and a womanhood and motherhood that diminishes all we are and could have been. Many even learn to become the defender of patriarchy, essentially voting against their own interest, in exchange for useless accolades as perfect wives and best mothers.

As a 10 year old, I did not have a name for outrage about how my world was ordered until a decade later, in a women’s study class in a little state university in Minnesota. I learnt about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her organizing and a little bit of her racism, I learnt of Sojourner Truth and Sister Soulja and black feminism. I met bell hooks’s militancy and tried to accept it all and find a way to tailor all these feminisms into who I was and who I wanted to become. Also I was preoccupied with how Beyonce (the one I was truly enthralled with) would fit in all of this. I read and I learnt but it wasn’t enough so I came home.

I have written about what feminism means to me HERE so I will not rehash it but to state that feminism as it’s core argues for the equality of the sexes, as eloquently stated by Chimanmanda Adichie. I must mention that it doesn’t argue for equality in the outcome but a true equality in the opportunities presented to all of our children. Feminists, according to Sheryl Sandberg, will be happy when 50 percent of young women run our countries, businesses and religious institutions and 50% of our boys rear their children and run their homes. Which naturally means that 50% of our men will run our public sphere while the other 50% of women will still run their homes. Thus feminism isn’t about reducing men’s influence or hating men but it argues for an egalitarian system truly based on merit and helping all of our children, boys and girls, fulfill their potential.

The world is worse off when a deeply religious and fundamentally called to service girl is kept from leading a flock simply because she is in possession of a vagina. Likewise, when a boy who wants to nurture his children and dedicate his life to their wellbeing is told that he is weak or somehow less of a great man because of his penis. As a mother of a little boy and as one who was a little girl once, I want a world that is just and that allows myself and my son to be all that we want and could be without judgment.

The patriarchy has managed to build a deeply structural system that prevents a truly egalitarian world. There are so many systems that keep women from work or forces them into diminished roles that it will take quite a long time to unpack all of them.

Sexual assaults, female genital mutilations, real discrimination in the work place, unequal pay for equal work, are all some of the real world factors that keep girls back. The thing that I am most committed to, notwithstanding the importance of all the other factors, is reproductive justice, which in my understanding includes maternal care and yes, access to health care that allows women to control their reproduction and choose.

Millions of women get pregnant every year; many of them are giddy and ecstatic over this blessing, many of them give birth to beautiful children and launch lives filled with the most intense love and a deep sense of accomplishment. I am one of them and my little boy is an incredible blessing, one that I am deeply grateful for. However, millions of women carry children they do not want to bear and are severely worse off physically, financially, and emotionally because of their pregnancies. Many more, who might want these children, or not, lose their lives through this process, leaving behind little children without mothers and full lives of their own. This injustice, this senseless loss of life and self-determination, should be unacceptable to us all.

Here are the facts: Each year about 34,000 to 54,000 able-bodied women die because of our horrible health system. I give you those numbers because we actually do not know why these women die. Yes, Nigeria, a middle-income oil rich nation, does not know how many mothers she buries each year. And if she does not know how many, how will she know why and if she does not know why, how can she stop this horror.

This I find incredibly outrageous and unacceptable. So from a deeply personal outrage when I was 10 years old, I find that my feminism is now rooted in the defense of female lives. It seems to be that before we must argue for equality, we at least must ensure survival of those who will be equal.

An Interview with Ugo Chime

9jafeminista: Can you tell us your major driving force?

Ugo Chime: I don’t know if I have a neat answer for this. When I was a kid, I hated how much I lacked even though I shouldn’t. I’ve already talked about my dad about my dad right? (check article here and here) And how he had money but he didn’t share it with his family. I hated that. I hated how little money my mom had. I hated how asking my dad for money (for what I considered necessities) turned into such big a production. How you had to beg and beg. Pray he was in a good mood, that he wasn’t fighting with mum, because if any of these conditions are in place, you won’t get a kobo.

I hated the begging. My god, I hated the begging above everything else! So I was eager to go out there and start making my own money, so I didn’t have to beg anyone for a dime. In a way, you could say that’s what has driven me, the phobia for being at someone’s mercy.

9jafeminista: mmmm

Ugo Chime: I want my own money. I never feel any money earned by my husband belongs to me, it’s his money, to do with as he pleases.

9jafeminista: Would you say you chose your career as a public health practitioner of your career chose you?

Ugo Chime: My first degree is in food science I wanted to do my masters in human nutrition, it was an aspect of food science I really clicked with, but after graduating from the university, I had to work, I was sick to death of begging my daddy for money. I was in a damn hurry to leave home for ever. I went to live with my sister and her husband, he’s a doctor and had an NGO. I started volunteering at his NGO, while looking for a job. When after 6 months I couldn’t get a job, he asked a friend of his whose NGO was more active, to take me on and pay me a salary, and that was how it began. Since then I’ve worked exclusively with NGOs.

Human nutrition was modified, with more knowledge, to an interest in public health nutrition, but it was rather narrow field. Besides, I became more passionate about women issues, maternal, child and newborn health (MCNH), I decided to focus on public health and as a wider field and health policy because I wanted to move from working with all these ‘oyibos’ who tell u what’s good for you, to working with national and state governments.

So, my big dream: to work with national and state governments in health policy, become a consultant to policy makers, get my PhD, maybe lecture…

9jafeminista: As somebody who has worked with several NGOs in Nigeria how would you rate their performance?

Ugo Chime: The international ones?

9jafeminista: Both the international and Nigerian ones

Ugo Chime: To be honest, Nigerian NGOs are far behind in what they could do, far behind, maybe that’s because I’m comparing them with UK third sector. There’s too much acceptance of the spoon-feeding by donors and the international NGOs, I would say it’s dismal.

9jafeminista: And what would you say about MCNH in Nigeria?

Ugo Chime: You know how bad our indicators are now, our maternal mortality rate is one of the highest in the world, we have a poor health system, we have the patriarchy, we have the poor proportion of girl child education.

9jafeminista: Would you say local NGOs are actually doing what they are receiving funding for?

Ugo Chime: They are, but that’s the thing! It shouldn’t be donors deciding what direction these NGOs should be taking. Of course there are others who aren’t serious, but these donors have strict accounting policies. So, when it comes to ticking off boxes, the local NGOs are doing it, Donor says train 500 men and women about the importance of hand washing, the local NGOs will bring you attendance sheet with probably 502 people trained. So, box ticked, but it doesn’t mean that’s what’s needed. It doesn’t mean that the training won’t die with the first set of people trained. That there is a trickle down effect.

It’s really for local NGOs to say, “No this is what is effective. This isn’t what will resonate with our people. Here and here ae what we really need.” That sort of thing

9jafeminista: Why can’t the local NGOs tell funders their methods are not effective?

Ugo Chime: They are doing it, just not on a large enough scale to cause a ripple effect. Not enough to get the donors to change their mode of engagement with the local ones. Right now, all the power is with big donors. They dictate the tune.

9jafeminista: If you were in a position to proffer a solution to the problems besieging Maternal Child and Newborns Health what would it be?

Ugo Chime: MCNH is complex, to be honest. It’s not like “he broke his leg, put him in POP, give the leg time to heal.” There are so many things contributing to the poor indicators. Things that aren’t easy to solve. We can say lets improve our health system. Let’s make healthcare for women and children free, because many women are poor. We could say make education free. There are so many things we can say would work but when it’s implemented it doesn’t, because new problems crop up. For example women don’t trust medical professionals, so make healthcare free as much as you like, but they aren’t going to come near a clinic. Make education free, but they believe an educated woman won’t get a husband, so they’d rather be illiterates.

9jafeminista: Would you say that there’s so much witchcraft going on that one could say it is the cause of the high figures in maternal and child mortality in Nigeria? This is because a lot of Nigerian women prefer going to churches or mosques, or through other spiritual avenues rather than hospitals.

Ugo Chime: I’d say the suspicion of witchcraft has been quite insane in leading to the death of many pregnant women. They refuse to seek medical intervention when things are going just awful during pregnancy.

They are going to prayer houses, pastors… whomever. Fervently believing someone is trying to kill them, that what is wrong is spiritual and so can be countered through spiritual means. Meanwhile things are getting worse for them, making it harder for medical intervention.

9jafeminista: Well, this can be due to the fear that medical practitioners are not spiritual enough to counter the attacks from the dark side.

Ugo Chime: I don’t believe in witches. I don’t believe in devil. I want to say I don’t believe in god, but am still undecided. I’m closer to not believing in god than in believing. So, the entire concept of witches is bullshit to me and I think people who believe in them are idiots.

9jafeminista: Would you say you don’t believe in winchis because you’re a feminist?

Ugo Chime: No. I know feminists who are Christians, who also believe in evil spirits, they may not think its exclusively in the form of females, they accept that evil can manifest as a female as well as male

9jafeminista: Who would you say has been the greatest influence in your life?

Ugo Chime: My father

9jafeminista: Please can you explain how?

Ugo Chime: Well, he’s a presence that looms over everything. Trying to escape him and his stinginess. Trying to fight his idea of how a ‘proper’ woman behaves. Marrying a man who is exactly NOT LIKE HIM! Trying to be exactly the kind of parent he isn’t, I dare say that till date I’m still trying to prove to him that I’m none of the things he used to say I am.